a misadventure and a slaughtered sheep.

It is a very tired and weary couple of Will and Jordans that greet you from blog world today. Turns out, after two months in genteel Europe we've gone soft and are having trouble re-adjusting to the crafty "sales techniques" of those who live in the not so lucky world. But. Take it back about a fortnight.

We ended up staying on at the finca in Spain for an extra week, not really for any particular reason, just because we liked it and both decided it would be stupid to cut our time there short. And it is a good thing we did. We gained two anecdotes to add to our repetoire from that week.

After finishing work one afternoon- and after our afternoon nap- we decided to walk out to an old monastery, set in the hills behind the finca. We set off at about 5, and it was quite a pleasant walk, through the valley, up along the ridge, down through olive and carob groves...then we realised we had been walking for more than an hour and the monstery was still a mirage in the distance. Being sensible, we thought, 'we should go back, don't want to get stuck out here in the dark'. Hahahaha...oh how we laugh. Now. It was most definitely not funny when we were running around like panicky idiots on the top of a mountain at dusk, staring at a wall of impenetrable, prickly shrub that stood between us and a delicious pizza dinner. (Actually, it would have looked quite funny...we were in no mood for frivolity though, you understand.) Anyway, we were on the ridge because we knew we could walk down a slip in between two of the hills. We just didn't know that by the time we found the slip it would be dark. So there we were, panicking our way down a rocky, prickly, slippery, ankle-breaky "path", in the dark, with only the thought of the wild boars that would surely snuggle up to us if we didn't make it home to keep us going. We made it home. Scratched up legs, huge appetites and a story and we were home.

Then the week went on. We went for a couple more walks- strolls really, safely along flat ground. Visited another old English couple who fed us a huge roast dinner with banana split chasers. Saw more charming villages. Hung out with the dogs. Painted a bit. Then it was our last day- for real this time- and we were ending it with a memory that will last forever. Our first sheep slaughter. That's right, we are well on our way to becoming real country people, who can kill and chop up a sheep for many a future dinners (I say well on our way...that may be an exaggeration. We were in fact giggling hysterically through most of the "operation", and I may, at one point, have had my photo taken holding a knife and fork next to a dangling sheep carcass...). But it's a start. I know what bit loin is know. And I know I will never be a vegatarian- seeing all the neatly cut up joints on the table set my stomach a-rumbling, even as the dog was licking up sheep's blood off the floor.

So, we knew we stayed for a reason. But then we really did have to leave (it was getting to the point that we probably would have adopted the finca as our second home and Cathy and James would have found themselves with two new grown-up children). We took our cue from the ducks and headed to Granada.

A wonderful city is Granada. And not only- though this is probably a large part of it- because of the 'free tapas with every drink' thing they have going on. Seriously, 2 or 3 euro (that's $3 or $4) and you can have a beer or wine or sangria and you will also get a little dish of stew or a piece of pizza or some meatballs. These Spaniards, they know a thing or two about the good life (you know, except in regard to the economy and running the country smoothly; food, drink and sleep though- they have it down!) But Granada is also a very wanderable city. The Arabic area climbs up a hill in all its whitewashed, tiled charm to several fantastic panoramic city views (edit out all the ipad-wielding tourists). The main city centre is walkable and dotted with little plazas of fountains and trees. There is the majesty of the Sierra Neveda mountain range in the background. There is a river and watching, steadily and serenely over the city, the Alhambra. An Islamic complex comprising palaces, unimaginably beautiful gardens, and everything else needed in a royal complex back in the day. It is a relic from the days of the Moors and (I'm sure) a world heritage sight. It would be a huge mistake to come to Granada and miss it (and we nearly did). But we lined up from 7am, in the rain, to get a ticket and it was truly worth it.

And for now, that is the end of our European adventure. I do, however, get the feeling we will be back on its welcoming soil before too long. Morocco is a little more difficult than we'd like at the moment and it is, after all, just a short hop across the water. Those Portuguese tarts are calling to us...

(Also P.S. no photos again, back to the imaginations I'm afraid, at least for now).

and the winner of the best city ever award....

Our brief stint living it up in the coolest city I've ever been to is over now, we are back in the country working on a farm, but this post is all about Barcelona. I promise you will all want to go there, after a week of tramping around its cafes, bars and neighbourhoods, we were all smitten.

You can walk in pretty much any direction from the horribly touristy central street called La Rambla and you will find something interesting to look at. There was the neighbourhood directly behind our hostel, of which the outskirts were the domain of homeless crazies and prostitutes but which became considerably cooler the further in you explored. Full of little bars and cafes and a big concrete square home to skaters and people practising break-dancing...one night, at about midnight, after a beer we sat and watched them...they were pretty good. Though not as good as the Jamaican dance-fighting troupe we saw at another square on another night...they were awesome, triple back flips and jumping over each other's heads. We even threw some euros into their hat after only seeing them perform for about a minute and a half, that's how good they were!

A bar we found and ate the worst nachos ever, microwaved, with packet cheese...but the beer was cheap and the music was good.

If we walked up the hill from our hostel we ended up the in fancy area, the Calvin Klein kind of shops area, where there are numerous Gaudi buildings to admire and wonder about. And that's the thing about Barcelona, you can just be walking up a shopping road and all of a sudden, amongst all the old European buildings, there is this crazy, odd shaped, colourful thing to make you stop and look. And then you walk on- or if you are rich go inside and admire anew- and find something else to look at.

One day we walked up to Park Guel, another of Gaudi's creations, about an hour and a half from our hostel. It was worth the walk though, to see more of his unreal buildings and also to listen to the band we chanced upon as we were wandering around...they were very good and very entertaining and they had decided to spend their Sunday afternoon entertaining tourists at the park, much to our delight.

The gingerbread house of Park Guel (sorry, I don't know how to rotate it)

Another Gaudi building we discovered on our walking...this one used to be apartments, now it's a gift shop and tourist destination as well as being a performance space sometimes.

I forgot to say, we also visited the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's most famous building (and most expensive to visit I imagine), which has been under construction for over 100 years and still isn't finished.

We spent a lot of time in Barcelona just wandering around, discovering places and cafes and bars. Luckily coffee and beer is pretty cheap, even in the city, so these many halts didn't break the bank. Although towards the end of our stay we did discover an awesome tapas bar where you sat down and just grabbed whatever looked delicious from the bar and even though each piece was only 1.65 each, we ended up spending around twenty euro each time...oops. But when you are sitting there with a beer and looking at little pieces of bread topped with things like jamon, goat cheese and berries, or the best Spanish omelette ever, or salmon, or even a piece of blood sausage- which sounds disgusting but is actually delicious-, you can't really stop yourself from reaching for more. We even convinced Iz to come with us on our last night and spend her last 3 euros on tapas. She was very pleased with her decision. (She was less pleased when we insisted on stopping for a drink at every reasonably priced place we came across...but after I bought her a custard filled churro she humoured us a little longer).

We had our first (and our last, now we know what to expect) European pickpocket experience in Barcelona. Just as I was beginning to think all those stories people bring home from Europe about being so quickly and unexpectedly robbed were unsubstantiated, we got robbed. Quickly and unexpectedly. More precisely, Iz got robbed. We were in the park, in a little circle, playing cards and these men kept wandering past, trying to sell beer or water or whatever. One must have noticed her phone poking out of her bag and so he bent down next to us and tried to convince us to buy hash which he used one hand to distract us with while he took her phone with the other...we didn't notice until about 20 minutes later when he was long gone. So now we can join camp 'seriously, don't leave anything anywhere obvious in Europe, it will get stolen', and I hold my bag much closer to my chest at all times now.



After the pickpocket...no iphone so she had to resort to her actual camera. Oh life!

As well as that, Barcelona also taught us some other lessons...it taught us that vermouth is delicious, especially when it is only 1 euro a glass, it taught us that public squares and parks and general areas mean life is lived outdoors and the city instantly becomes more vibrant, it taught us that a good way to get people to ride bikes around the city is to put racks of them everywhere that you can pick up and use and drop back somewhere else when you are done.

A bar with jamon. And delicious sangria. And a photo-shy Isabelle.

We had a fantastic time there. Visiting the beach occasionally- it was always packed though, we aren't quite used to that yet, pedalling out to visit other areas, buying ridiculously cheap baguettes and picnicking on jamon sandwiches for lunch, visiting shops we couldn't afford and looking wistfully at the products. We visited one tea shop at least 5 times to get tiny free sample cups of ice tea. Iz and I sprayed ourselves with what we thought was peach perfume in another shop, then realised it was actually toilet spray and left the shop laughing hysterically, under the unimpressed gazes of the salespeople. It was also good wandering around the tiny, winding streets of the old town and ending up in little tree strewn squares, home to cafes and, more often than not, some type of sculpture. These walks would have been better, of course, if there weren't a billion other tourists there too. The good thing about  most tourists though is that they rarely wander too far from the hordes, so all we had to do to escape them was walk for 15 minutes in another direction. Usually then the coffee and beer got at least 25% cheaper as well.

La Rambla and the famous mural by Miro.

Us being the wicked-sick dudes we are in graff central.

A little alleyway and some cool cats.

But the time came to leave- money allowing I could have stayed there at least a month, unfortunately it wasn't allowing- so we ate our last tapa and gelati and custard filled churro, drank our last café and beer and woke up horridly early to accompany Iz to the train station from where she was headed to the airport. And we were headed south, to a farm, to see what was going on there.

Just one of the many plazas of Barcelona.